My mom, Kim Eun-ji, was a detective.
The kind who wore red lipstick while snapping a suspect's wrist like it was nothing. She wasn't just beautiful—she was dangerous. Grace wrapped in steel.
I once watched her take down a drunk man twice her size at the bus stop. One moment, he was yelling at some girl. The next, he was on the ground, face in gravel, her heel on his back like it was choreographed.
That was my mom.
And I was her daughter.
While other girls were trading stickers or learning makeup, I was learning how to break a grip, dodge a strike, breathe through pain.
Dad—Kim Kyu-bok—was a cop. A gentle one. He taught me how to clean wounds and load a gun before I was ten.
Maybe that's why no one messed with me at school. I was a walking warning label with pigtails.
---
But none of that strength mattered when the world shattered.
I don't remember every detail. Just the phone call. The shouting. My teacher's pale face. The rush to the hospital.
The lobby reeked of antiseptic and panic. Everything was spinning.
I saw a boy—maybe fourteen —sitting with an officer, face pale.
Then Dad. Slumped on the floor. Not crying. Just silent. His shoulders were shaking like they were trying to hold up a collapsing sky.
I ran.
I ran harder than I ever had.
But when I found her—
She was already gone.
Her throat had been slit.
There was so much blood.
It soaked the sheets. The floor. My shoes. My breath.
I opened my mouth, but nothing came out. Just... nothing.
Time stopped.
---
Dad didn't speak.
He didn't cry.
He just sat there, holding her ID badge, blood crusted on the edges. He clutched it like it was her heart still beating in his palm.
He never let go of it. Not that night. Not for years.
He never remarried. Not in my last life. Not ever.
His love was the kind you buried with the body.
---
But the worst wasn't watching him break.
It was the twins.
They didn't understand.
My brother kept asking why Mom wasn't picking him up from school, sat by the window for days, watching shadows.
He clutched a broken crayon.
He hugged a pair of Mom's old gloves.
What do you say to that?
I didn't have answers. Just arms.
So I held them and whispered, "It's okay, it's okay," even when I knew it wasn't.
Even when I was drowning too.
That night, I stopped being just a sister.
I became everything they lost.
---
It wasn't all darkness.
They tried. God, they tried.
My little brother folded laundry like origami nightmares, made me burnt toast with jam smiley faces.
We laughed. We lived.
Until puberty came like a wrecking ball.
They pulled away.
Rolled eyes. Slammed doors.
"Stop acting like our mom," they said.
It cut deeper than a knife.
Not because they were wrong. But because they were right.
---
The next morning, after breakfast, Dad dropped them at school.
I said I was going too. I lied.
My head was too full of ghosts.
I texted Ha-rin. She showed up in a hoodie ten times too big, holding two iced coffees and no judgment.
"You skipping again?" she asked, flopping beside me on the park bench.
"I needed space."
We watched birds hop around. Some kid screamed near the swings. A wind stirred my guilt.
After a long silence, I turned to her. "Ha-rin… if I told you I died when I was twenty-three and came back... would you believe me?"